Muhammad's willing executioners

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Our contributor Andrew Bostom, the world's leading historian of jihad, has another important article today, in Front Page Magazine, on the scriptural and historical roots of infidel—killing in Islam. As always, his examples are vivid, numerous, and chilling. A small excerpt:

Muhammad's brutal conquest and subjugation of the Khaybar Jews, and their subsequent expulsion by one of his companions, the (second) 'Rightly Guided' Caliph Umar, epitomize permanent, archetypal behavior patterns Islamic Law deemed appropriate to Muslim interactions with Jews. As the scholar George Vajda has observed, the theological—juridical, and historical consequences of these archetypes, resulted, at best, in the Jews being dhimmis'subject to Muslim domination', and treated 'with contempt', under 'humiliating arrangements'. When the Jews were perceived as having exceeded the rightful bounds of this subjected relationship, as in mythically 'tolerant' Muslim Spain, the results were predictably tragic. The Granadan Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela, and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, and in the aftermath, the Jewish population was annihilated by the local Muslims. It is estimated that up to five thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. This figure equals or exceeds the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade.

Thomas Lifson 7 31 06

Our contributor Andrew Bostom, the world's leading historian of jihad, has another important article today, in Front Page Magazine, on the scriptural and historical roots of infidel—killing in Islam. As always, his examples are vivid, numerous, and chilling. A small excerpt:

Muhammad's brutal conquest and subjugation of the Khaybar Jews, and their subsequent expulsion by one of his companions, the (second) 'Rightly Guided' Caliph Umar, epitomize permanent, archetypal behavior patterns Islamic Law deemed appropriate to Muslim interactions with Jews. As the scholar George Vajda has observed, the theological—juridical, and historical consequences of these archetypes, resulted, at best, in the Jews being dhimmis'subject to Muslim domination', and treated 'with contempt', under 'humiliating arrangements'. When the Jews were perceived as having exceeded the rightful bounds of this subjected relationship, as in mythically 'tolerant' Muslim Spain, the results were predictably tragic. The Granadan Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela, and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, and in the aftermath, the Jewish population was annihilated by the local Muslims. It is estimated that up to five thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. This figure equals or exceeds the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade.